"This shit again," Lucky hissed, shaking his head. "How the fuck many times do we have to lay this out for them?"
"Watch it," my father demanded, voice firm.
Antony Grassi might have been the boss in Navesink Bank.
But every boss had a boss.
My father was old-school when it came to the code, though. You didn't talk shit about the capo dei capi.
Lucky, having seen his father murdered right before his eyes by the current boss when he was just eleven, well, he was a bit more new-school about it.
He'd never say it, but he was looking forward to the day when someone else got sick of Arturo Costa and his reign of terror, and his son stepped into his place.
"Are we expecting a visit?" I asked my father.
"Lorenzo will be around sometime in the near future. He is off on a job, but when he is on his way back to the city, he will be stopping here."
Lorenzo, Costa's eldest son, the underboss everyone knew would make a better boss, was no less ruthless than his father. If anything, he had more blood on his hands. But he was also more reasonable. If we had to have a drop-in, it was better if it was Lorenzo instead of Arturo.
"Which means we need to get our house in order," my father told us, eyes pinning me.
Because he knew I had a mess on my hands, that we had an unwanted mouse skittering around in our attic.
"I heard she was beautiful," Lucky said, giving me a sly smile. If there was anyone who liked women more than Matteo did, it was Lucky. And, given that women would always be into well-dressed men in powerful, dangerous positions, they loved him right back.
"She was," I agreed. Because it was the truth.
If you were going to have a problem on your hands, it made it more tolerable that the problem was easy on the eyes and ears, her voice somehow honey-sweet and smoky at the same time.
Dario had been working on Romina's—Romy's—file since we'd first gotten a name for her. He hadn't' been able to figure out much, though.
"You think she went back to California?" my father asked.
"She'd be stupid not to," I said, shrugging.
In my experience, when people figured out you were in the mob, they didn't tend to stick around for any length of time. They damn sure didn't fuck with your business.
"But if there's one thing we know about most small-time criminals," my father said, "it's that they are usually not very smart."
"Which is why we have everyone we can spare coming to the docks tonight, me included," I reassured him. Yes, he was my boss, but he was also my father. And I didn't want him thinking he needed to have his feet on the ground in potentially dangerous situations anymore. That was my place. It was his turn to take a break. He could hang back at the restaurant with Leandro, charming the high-rolling locals, making sure everything was up to his high standards from the food to the wine to the service. He was better at that than I was. Matteo was the best of all of us, but he usually couldn't be bothered to bring his charming ass in for a shift.
"If you find her there again—" he said, waving out a hand, letting the topic fall off. Because there were some things you didn't say aloud, some things that went without saying at all.
If we found her there again, she couldn't be allowed to get away. We would have to grab her, drag her in, throw her down in a basement somewhere, and then get information out of her by any means necessary.
We were, in general, old-school when it came to our moral code.
We didn't threaten wives and children. We didn't hurt women.
But times refused to stay old-fashioned, and women could just as frequently be a threat to our business as men could. Which meant, when we had to, we needed to be willing to use whatever methods needed to extract information.
We hadn't needed to put our hands on a woman before. And I hoped to hell we wouldn't have to now.
But if the order came down, the order came down.
Lucky and I shared a look, one of mutual apprehension and distaste mixed with resignation.
Family before everything.